Former President Obama is being honored with a new state holiday in his former state of Illinois.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) signed a measure Friday to make Aug. 4 “Barack Obama Day” in the state, according to NBC Chicago. The holiday will be celebrated each year on Obama’s birthday beginning in 2018.

The day is “set apart to honor the 44th President of the United States of America who began his career serving the People of Illinois in both the Illinois State Senate and the United States Senate, and dedicated his life to protecting the rights of Americans and building bridges across communities.”

Senate Bill 55 was passed by both state houses with no votes against it.

Rauner praised the idea behind the bill earlier this year after a previous version, which would have made the day a legal state holiday, failed. The new holiday is commemorative.

"It's incredibly proud for Illinois that the president came from Illinois. I think it's awesome, and I think we should celebrate it," Rauner said at the time, according to NBC Chicago. "I don't think it should be a formal holiday with paid, forced time off, but I think it should be a day of acknowledgment and celebration."

Tuesday's bombshell Washington Post story that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has determined North Korea is capable of constructing miniaturized nuclear weapons that could be used as warheads for missiles – possibly ICBMs – left out a crucial fact: DIA actually concluded this in 2013. The Post also failed to mention that the Obama administration tried to downplay and discredit this report at the time.

North Korean statements. Rumours of an impending nuclear test circulated during 2005 and early 2006, though none came to immediate fruition. On October 3, 2006, however, North Korea claimed that it would soon conduct a nuclear test, and on October 9, 2006, the state claimed to have successfully conducted a test.

Conservatives generally believe that the accumulation and maintenance of wealth is a good thing. We like money, we admire success, and we don’t view those who’ve achieved a significant fortune with contempt. We’re aware that well-funded bank accounts provide employment, stimulate the economy, and keep the country humming along.

The left disagrees. If you’re rich, you aren’t paying your fair share. Heck, even if you’re not rich you should be taxed more. To them, the wealthy are like dragons - sleeping on a mountain of ill-gotten gold - lording over the peasants with filthy, probably-stolen, lucre that they couldn’t spend in a hundred lifetimes. No one needs all that cash, and really you should only have what you the government decides you should be allowed to keep. As we know, they never self-apply this standard. We’ve done a thousand pieces on how leftist-statism is built on a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do foundation, but fatcat Dems keep offering new examples. It’s just so easy to point out their hypocrisy, that we’d be fools to stop doing it.

Enter former President Barack Obama: a man who wants to “spread the wealth around” and who once famously said “at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

...According to Realtor.com, he’s looking to purchase one of two vacant lots on his favorite vacation Island, Martha’s Vineyard. Of course, he doesn’t want to live inland like some commoner, so both properties are ocean front. They’re also not cheap. The man who wonders when ‘enough is enough’ is looking at plots that start at $12 million and, remember, that’s without a house.

Nine days after Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg dismissed as “crazy” the idea that fake news on his company’s social network played a key role in the U.S. election, President Barack Obama pulled the youthful tech billionaire aside and delivered what he hoped would be a wake-up call.

For months leading up to the vote, Obama and his top aides quietly agonized over how to respond to Russia’s brazen intervention on behalf of the Donald Trump campaign without making matters worse. Weeks after Trump’s surprise victory, some of Obama’s aides looked back with regret and wished they had done more.

Now huddled in a private room on the sidelines of a meeting of world leaders in Lima, Peru, two months before Trump’s inauguration, Obama made a personal appeal to Zuckerberg to take the threat of fake news and political disinformation seriously. Unless Facebook and the government did more to address the threat, Obama warned, it would only get worse in the next presidential race.

Zuckerberg acknowledged the problem posed by fake news. But he told Obama those messages weren’t widespread on Facebook and that there was no easy fix, according to people briefed on the exchange, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of a private conversation.

In the electrified aftermath of the election, aides to Hillary Clinton and Obama pored over polling numbers and turnout data, looking for clues to explain what they saw as an unnatural turn of events.

One of the theories to emerge from their post-mortem was that Russian operatives who were directed by the Kremlin to support Trump may have taken advantage of Facebook and other social media platforms to direct their messages to American voters in key demographic areas in order to increase enthusiasm for Trump and suppress support for Clinton.

"In the electrified aftermath of the election, aides to Hillary Clinton and Obama pored over polling numbers and turnout data, looking for clues to explain what they saw as an unnatural turn of events"

roflmao...these people are truly the dumbest of the dumb LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Barack Obama: We need to elect more women because 'men are having problems'The Telegraph (UK) ^ Posted on 12/4/2017, 7:16:24 AM by TigerClaws

Barack Obama has called for more women to be elected to office because "because men seem to be having some problems these days."

AFP reported that the former President made these remarks while talking to a private event in Paris on Saturday, and was referring to the sexual misconduct allegations made against many high-profile men.

He said: "Not to generalize but women seem to have a better capacity than men do, partly because of their socialisation."

At the event, which was arranged by a network of communications professionals known as the Napoleons, Obama did not mention President Donald Trump.

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However, he did mention a "temporary absence of American leadership" with regards to climate change.

His remarks about this inspired laughter in the room, which was packed with French CEOs and former ministers.

India needs to 'cherish and nurture' its Muslims: Barack ObamaEconomic Times ^ | December 2, 2017 Posted on 12/4/2017, 10:02:08 AM by Zakeet

India needs to "cherish and nurture" its Muslim population, which is integrated and considers itself Indian, former US president Barack Obama has said. It is an idea that needs to be reinforced, he emphasised at an event of a media organisation in New Delhi on Friday.

[Snip]

Replying to a question, Obama spoke of India's "enormous Muslim population", which is successful, integrated and thinks of itself as Indian. That is unfortunately not always the case in some other countries, Obama added.

Referring to India, he said, "And that is something that needs to be cherished and nurtured, cultivated. It’s important to continue reinforcing it." To a separate question, he said Modi’s "impulse" was to recognise the importance of Indian unity. "I think he firmly believes the need for that in order to advance to the great nation status," Obama said.

Asked about terror emanating from Pakistan, Obama said, "What is true, and an understandable source of frustration, ...

Sen. Susan Collins is now pushing for twice the amount of money she originally requested in an Obamacare bill she's co-sponsoring in order to win her vote on the tax overhaul measure, The Hill reports.

The Maine Republican is co-sponsoring a bill with Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, that would provide states with $10 billion over two years to establish reinsurance programs to lower premiums or high-risk pools. They had originally requested $4.5 billion in the bill, the report said.

"This plan will provide $5 billion annually for two years in seed money for states to establish invisible high-risk pools or traditional reinsurance programs," Collins said in a statement Friday, the report said.

President Trump told Collins before the Senate's tax bill vote that he supported legislation to stabilize the insurance markets and to fund states' high-risk pools.

It’s not healthy to dwell on the past. But, for the taxpayers across the country, it is important to learn from past mistakes. The continued problems with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), aka Stimulus Plan, is a good lesson as to what not to do. The nearly trillion-dollar spending package, passed on a party-line vote in 2009, was supposed to rocket the economy out of the recession.

The law funded absurd projects such as a snowmaking facility in Duluth, Minn., math and literacy coaches for North Carolina’s public school teachers, and a $3 million tunnel for turtles in Florida.

Still, then-President Obama promised up to 500,000 new construction jobs a month. Vice President Joe Biden declared the summer of 2010 as the “Recovery Summer.” Administration officials heralded “an explosion of projects” across the country. It couldn’t be all bad, right?

But as the air turned crisp and the shadows grew longer, even the taxpayer-funded National Public Radio couldn’t spin the results. “’Recovery Summer’ Ends with Economic Pothole,” read a September headline.

The failure of Obama’s stimulus plan would be laughable if it didn’t carry an $835 billion price tag. Or if it wasn’t still fleecing taxpayers.

But sadly, the disastrous impact of the stimulus hasn’t ended with the Obama administration. The ARRA is back in the news nine years after it was enacted and a year after Obama left office.

According to the South Bend Tribune, “two local lawyers claim 62 Indiana hospitals, including two in St. Joseph County, systematically falsified records and defrauded taxpayers of more than $300 million.”

The lawyers allege the hospitals in Indiana took federal grant money made available through the ARRA to implement electronic medical records systems. Only it doesn’t appear that they implemented the electric records systems at all.

“The lawsuit says the pair found that in 2013, Memorial Hospital reported 16 requests for electronic medical records and claimed it provided all 16 within the required three business day period,” the South Bend Tribune reports. “The lawyers allege that on five occasions between April and Dec. 2013, they received records in an electronic format only once and none of the records were issued within three business days, contradicting what the hospital reported. The pair claim to have found similar discrepancies with the other three hospitals.”

When it comes to taxpayer boondoggles, $300 million is just the tip of the iceberg. If the allegations are true, hospitals were able to siphon off nearly $5 million each on average. Investigations around the country can and will likely yield “discrepancies” totaling tens of billions of dollars.

Regardless of the pitfalls of the stimulus package, most Americans have reasonably assumed that the worst is behind them, with the nearly trillion dollars long flushed away. Unfortunately, taxpayers are not off the hook just yet for gargantuan spending passed nearly nine years ago. This episode serves as a cruel reminder that government programs linger on long after they have run their course or have been demonstrated to be useless, even harmful.

This is another teachable moment about the fallacy of Keynesian-style government stimulus and the wastefulness of unnecessary government spending. Despite this, and other reprehensible findings about the misuse of stimulus funds, it’s unlikely that politicians in Washington will learn their lessons.

American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump.

Obama's comments came after a series of playful questions from moderator and Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson—in the great Batman vs. Superman debate, for instance, we learned Obama sides with Batman—before she eventually asked him what he's learned as a world citizen of sorts.

One thing he's learned is that "things don't happen internationally if we don't put our shoulder to the wheel," Obama said, speaking of the U.S. "No other country has the experience and bandwidth and ideals. . . .If the U.S. doesn't do it, it's not going to happen."

Obama gave one specific example, but it was a solid one: Ebola. To fight the virus the U.S. did everything from build an airport tarmac in Africa to send in medical teams and ferry medicos from other countries. "We probably saved a million lives by doing that," he said.

At least indirectly, those comments could be seen as criticism of Trump, whose foreign policy focuses on an "America first" paradigm that critics say distracts from this country's unique role.

Obama moved from that to talking about a nativist mistrust and unease that has swept around the world. He argued that such things as the speed of technical change and the uneven impact of globalization have come too quickly to be absorbed in many cultures, bringing strange new things and people to areas in which "people didn't (used to) challenge your assumptions." As a result, "nothing feels solid," he said. "Sadly, there's something in us that looks for simple answers when we're agitated."

Still, the U.S. has survived tough times before and will again, he noted, particularly mentioning the days of communist fighter Joseph McCarthy and former President Richard Nixon. But one reason the country survived is because it had a free press to ask questions, Obama added. Though he has problems with the media just like Trump has had, "what I understood was the principle that the free press was vital."

The danger is "grow(ing) complacent," Obama said. "We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly."

That's what happened in Germany in the 1930s, which despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate, Obama noted. "Sixty million people died. . . .So, you've got to pay attention. And vote."

Obama said his greatest "regret and disappointment" was the failure to enact tighter controls on gun possession. Though the issue resonates in far different ways with different parts of the population, "something is broke," Obama said, his own voice breaking, as he talked about 6-year-old girls shot to death at Sandy Hook, girls not too different in age from his own daughters.

To the best of my knowledge, the session, which went well over an hour, represented the lengthiest comments the former president has made in a semi-public setting since he left office.

Admission to the event was open to club members and their guests. Hobson said a record 2,800 people attended, filling two ballrooms at the Chicago Hilton.

American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump.

Obama's comments came after a series of playful questions from moderator and Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson—in the great Batman vs. Superman debate, for instance, we learned Obama sides with Batman—before she eventually asked him what he's learned as a world citizen of sorts.

One thing he's learned is that "things don't happen internationally if we don't put our shoulder to the wheel," Obama said, speaking of the U.S. "No other country has the experience and bandwidth and ideals. . . .If the U.S. doesn't do it, it's not going to happen."

Obama gave one specific example, but it was a solid one: Ebola. To fight the virus the U.S. did everything from build an airport tarmac in Africa to send in medical teams and ferry medicos from other countries. "We probably saved a million lives by doing that," he said.

At least indirectly, those comments could be seen as criticism of Trump, whose foreign policy focuses on an "America first" paradigm that critics say distracts from this country's unique role.

Obama moved from that to talking about a nativist mistrust and unease that has swept around the world. He argued that such things as the speed of technical change and the uneven impact of globalization have come too quickly to be absorbed in many cultures, bringing strange new things and people to areas in which "people didn't (used to) challenge your assumptions." As a result, "nothing feels solid," he said. "Sadly, there's something in us that looks for simple answers when we're agitated."

Still, the U.S. has survived tough times before and will again, he noted, particularly mentioning the days of communist fighter Joseph McCarthy and former President Richard Nixon. But one reason the country survived is because it had a free press to ask questions, Obama added. Though he has problems with the media just like Trump has had, "what I understood was the principle that the free press was vital."

The danger is "grow(ing) complacent," Obama said. "We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly."

That's what happened in Germany in the 1930s, which despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate, Obama noted. "Sixty million people died. . . .So, you've got to pay attention. And vote."

Obama said his greatest "regret and disappointment" was the failure to enact tighter controls on gun possession. Though the issue resonates in far different ways with different parts of the population, "something is broke," Obama said, his own voice breaking, as he talked about 6-year-old girls shot to death at Sandy Hook, girls not too different in age from his own daughters.

To the best of my knowledge, the session, which went well over an hour, represented the lengthiest comments the former president has made in a semi-public setting since he left office.

Admission to the event was open to club members and their guests. Hobson said a record 2,800 people attended, filling two ballrooms at the Chicago Hilton.

A new report shows that in its efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Tehran, the administration went so far as to stop the DEA from cracking down on Hezbollah drug-running.

Over the weekend Politico’s Josh Meyer published a blockbuster report that can’t be allowed to disappear into the void of the holiday season. In painstaking detail, it documents claims that the Obama administration crippled Drug Enforcement Administration operations against Hezbollah as part of its effort to reach a nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.

Why would the DEA, of all agencies, target an international terrorist organization? It turns out that Hezbollah had become a major player in international cocaine trafficking and was using proceeds from its drug-running and arms-dealing to finance — among other things — the purchase of explosively formed penetrators (EFP’s), the deadliest IEDs used against American soldiers in Iraq.

Hezbollah had transformed itself into an “international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year.” The DEA’s “Project Cassandra” was designed to disrupt this syndicate. And just as the operation began reaching into the highest echelons of one of the world’s worst terrorist organizations, the Obama administration started to shut it down:

The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

Some former Obama administration officials justified these actions on the basis that the DEA may have interfered with more important anti-terror operations conducted by other intelligence organizations. As one former official put it, the administration couldn’t let the CIA, the DEA, or any other agency “rule the roost.” But other sources confirmed that the administration in fact hindered the DEA for the sake of the Iran deal. For example, former Obama Treasury Department official Katherine Bauer testified to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that “under the Obama administration . . . these [Hezbollah-related] investigations were tamped down for fear of rocking the boat with Iran and jeopardizing the nuclear deal.”

The consequences were deadly. In the most personally painful part of the Politico piece, Meyer details Hezbollah’s role in funding EFPs that “were ripping M1 Abrams tanks in half.” I remember the power of these weapons quite well. A smaller version of an EFP was used to kill men that I knew in Iraq. The mere threat of EFPs at one point shut down all ground supply routes into our base near the Iranian border. It’s a strange feeling indeed to ride down Iraqi roads knowing that there’s a weapon out there that would render all the armor surrounding you virtually irrelevant. EFPs killed hundreds of American soldiers, and they were supplied by the Iranian government and its Hezbollah allies.

But never mind. The Iran deal had to get done. The deal, at least in the Obama administration’s fantasyland, wasn’t just a nuclear deal. It was a step toward hopefully normalizing relations with Iran, bringing the Islamic Republic back into the community of nations. It was a legacy play, and it depended on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of our enemy.

You see, the Obama administration was in many ways captive to the “legitimate grievances” theory of jihad. This theory, outlined most famously in Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech, holds that jihad’s appeal is rooted at least in part in identifiable American and western abuses of the Islamic world. It was the root of the Obama administration’s deluded efforts to initiate a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.” The administration would act to address credible Islamic grievances, and that action would and should trigger a good-faith response that would bring us closer to peace.

It all seems so quaint now. When Obama pulled back, our enemies surged. When he gave them an inch, they took a mile. There was no good-faith response, only the gleeful exploitation of newfound strategic advantage. When Obama finally re-engaged, American force was able to stop our enemies’ advance. But by then, the damage was done, and we’re still learning the extent of it today. We already knew that Obama gave Iran piles of cash, prisoners, an immense economic stimulus, and access to international arms markets in exchange for signing the nuclear deal. We now know — thanks to Politico — that the administration’s mercies extended even to Iran’s vicious terrorist allies.

And for what? Obama’s defenders cling to the hope that Iran’s nuclear program has been delayed (a hope that relies a great deal on trusting Iran, which has never proven wise in the past), but in the meantime we’ve merely strengthened our enemy. We’ve addressed those “legitimate grievances,” and Iran has taken our gifts and our goodwill and thrown them right back in our face. Iran and Hezbollah — with Russia’s help — have nearly completed their genocidal reconquest of Syria’s most populated regions. In Iraq, an Iranian general played a key role in the seizure of Kirkuk from our Kurdish allies. Iran hasn’t retreated one inch from its anti-Americanism or its commitment to international jihad. It’s even sending aid (including senior commandos) to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Three years ago, I wrote an extended piece arguing that Obama was idealistic about our enemies. He didn’t understand the depth of their hate. He fell for ridiculous academic theories about American culpability in the rise of jihadist violence. Little did we know how far the ideological rot went. Obama administration mistakes empowered the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East, relieving the pressure on the violent, extremist forces it pays for. These mistakes must be known. They must be remembered. And they must never, ever be repeated. America’s jihadist enemies cannot be appeased.

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; GovernmentKEYWORDS: obamadrugs; obamahezbollah; obamairandeal; obamalegacyThe Power of monthlies: We currently have about $13k in monthlies. If we could raise that number to $15k, it'd cut a week to ten days off our FReepathon time. Raising it to $18k would reduce it by two weeks or more. Anything over $20k and our FReepathons would complete in 30 days or less!If you love using FR, please consider signing up as a monthly donor today and help get FR on a sound financial footing as well as helping to shorten or even end FReepathons! Thank you very much for your loyal support.

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Historians will write about what a vile POS Obama was. I hope they don't forget the other vile POS who[ Post Reply |